Can You Bring Peace to the Middle East?

There are solutions!

There are solutions!

“While I was in the Holy Land last year, a priest told us sadly that if Jesus had tried to make his walk from Bethany to Jerusalem today, he wouldn’t be able to make it through the checkpoints,” writes author Shane Claiborne. “We lamented together the wall that so terribly divides this Holy Land into what one Israeli leader called ‘the most sophisticated apartheid system the world has ever seen.’” Claiborne is the co-author of Red Letter Revolution: What if Jesus Really Meant What He Said. “As I walked the footsteps of Jesus through the land, I was reminded of a story Jesus told about a wealthy man who built a wall and locked the poor outside of it, a story often known as “the Rich Man and Lazarus” (Luke 16:19–31). The rich man ends up in the flames of hell, pleading with the beggar for a drop of water. To love God is also to love the most vulnerable of God’s children. We are made for compassion. Too often we build walls and gates to protect ourselves only to find that we are the ones held hostage.”